Instant Messaging

In the years of the telephone, communication was limited, especially between young people, college or university students in particular. It costs money to make a phone call, and even more money if that phone call is long distance which is common when you're a university or college student. A new day has dawned, this is the day of instant messaging. Gone are the days when you set aside some time once a week to call your friends who are off in other schools. Talking to a pal now is simply a click away on any computer with Internet access. Instant Messaging has irreversibly impacted social structure, giving new face to traditional methods of interaction. The speed at which Instant Messaging has came upon us begs the question; how has society been changed by IM, and what changes are yet to come?

Considering the speed at which Instant Messaging integrated itself into every environment with and Internet connection, how could society be expected to decide whether it's right or wrong, we just don't have the time. Too many other things are happening in the world for us to be concerned with smiley emoticons and fancy fonts bearing heart felt messages. However, new forms of media and the changes it brings do not go unnoticed to all. Marshall McLuhan, considered to be a founder of modern media studies envisioned these changes years ago. Among his many aphorisms, this one seems most fitting for Instant Messaging: "Electric circuitry has overthrown the regime of 'time' and 'space' and pours upon us instantly and continuously the concerns of all other men. It has reconstituted dialogue on a global scale. Its message is Total Change".

McLuhan was a futurist, and a visionary. Although he did not live to see the Internet, his theories on media in general can be applied to all mediums. One of MacLuhan's most famous aphorisms is "The medium is the message", meaning:

"We can know the nature and characteristics of anything we conceive or create (medium) by virtue of the changes - often unnoticed and non-obvious changes - that they effect (message)".

MacLuhan wasn't particularly interested in the content carried by a medium, but rather the psychological and social effects brought by any extension of our senses. These extensions of our senses being; when individuals or whole society's make use of something new in a way that extends the range of the human body and mind(i.e. Internet, IM). To demonstrate what he meant by "the medium is the message", MacLuhan used the example of electric light as a medium. He stated electric light has no content whatsoever, yet it has a significant impact on society. With new forms of media such as the Internet or IM, we generally know what they will do, and what they may replace as well as any advantages and disadvantages they may have. McLuhan would not have been concerned with controversial issues like pornography and unwanted advertising on the Internet. Instead, he would have been more concerned with how these mediums would affect our society, senses, thoughts, and perceptions regardless of the content being carried by them. MacLuhan warned that society can often be distracted by the content preventing the real changes from being seen. If we choose to not worry ourselves with the good or bad content that new mediums offer we can begin to see the real change that they bring.

If we want to find the real change IM has brought, we need to look past the text-boxes and emoticons. We need to explore what is different about our society and ourselves because of IM. MacLuhan's publications provide yet another explanation of how we can determine the change brought by any new type of medium. MacLuhan believed "we become what we behold," that "we shape our tools, and there- after our tools shape us. " Applying this to IM, it seems to hold true. IM was created by us as a tool to deliver both efficient communication as well as entertainment, and now we are beginning to see some the effects it has had, is having, and will continue to have in the future.

MacLuhan believed that one change in particular would be inherent in all new electronic media. He envisioned that electronic mediums would begin to return society to it's old ways of perceiving the world. This retribalization of the world was known as the "global village" theory. This theory long preceded the days of the Internet and IM, but McLuhan believed it could be applied to all forms of media. What the "global village" theory implies is that the more electronically connected we become, the closer we become as a human race. These theories bear striking relevance to a current theory stating that Instant Messaging is creating a new form of isolationism, and that people spending long hours with nothing but computers is non beneficial to society. Another current theory reminds us that we're a society of instant gratification and that history has already defined our reaction to new and better things. Primitively, we were walkers, then we found horses, then we built cars, and now we can fly, hover, or take the high speed train. So should society be looking for answers by mining the endless resources and theories of our current knowledge base? Or are the answers already in front of us, nestled in the abstractness of media as a whole. It seems as though all theories, whether they be for IM or against it, scream change. According to MacLuhan, this makes perfect sense being in that it's not the nature of the change, it's the change itself. According to statistics, something must have changed. Millions of people are using IM on a regular basis so something must have been replaced, modified, or eliminated to compensate this new medium. If it is true that change for better or worse is irrelevant, and the tools we create in turn reshape us, then seeing the "message" being delivered by IM is trivial. It's just a matter of looking at our society before IM, and looking at it now; the change is obvious. Since it's the youth of world that seem do be leading the pack in adopting this new technology, it would seem relevant to use them as a case study in examining these changes. As a youngster in high school, I always wondered why nobody dated anymore, nor could I understand how people could be strangers one day, and dating the next. I was always under the impression that some sort of recurring physical interaction had to be made before people could even know each other. Did they just introduce themselves and decide to date?. Or was there more happening behind the scenes than I was aware of. Traditionally, in "old school" settings, a boy could spend days mustering up the courage to look a girl in the eyes and ask her out,